Betty's Books has got a new look!

Ta-da!!

I really spent a lot of time on this, and I'm only just using 'ready-made' templates and designs. Imagine if I did all the html and javascript from scratch like I used to.

*faints*

This is why I stopped doing that. It was just too time-consuming, what with everything I've got to do.

Anyway, I'm always digressing...

Back to the topic. Betty's Books has a new look, and although I know I haven't been posting much about the books I've read recently, I will start posting again.

Of course, it won't be as much as I use to post, because I read a lot more then. Now I read just one or two books a month, since I spent the majority of the time reading textbooks. So I guess I won't be posting a lot of reviews, but I will probably be posting a lot of book-related news.

I've made a pledge that I may not buy any more books (*gasp*!) until I've read more of the ones I've already got, and gotten rid of the ones I don't want anymore.

As hard as it is.... I had to make this pledge. =( I'm running out of shelf space, and I'm buying more books than I can read, now that I'm reading less than before. Besides, it would help me save some money.

Ok, until next time!

Authors and their comfort zones

Once upon a time there was an author who loved to write romance. She wanted all those happily ever after endings and when she sold her first two books she knew she was going to write more. When she wrote about the hero’s point of view in her first book she was told “you can’t do that” and she couldn’t understand why. Just as the heroine and hero couldn’t make love unless they had planned to get married very soon after and it was mentioned. So each time she was told “you can’t do that” she asked why and from then on, she did her best to break one or two “rules” and get away with it. Sometimes she did get away with it and sometimes she again heard “you can’t do that”.

She also knew she loved to write about things that go bump in the night and anything that couldn’t be properly explained. At first, she was told the paranormal ideas she had wouldn’t sell, but it didn’t stop her. After all, the time would come when she could write the books she well and truly loved to write.

So along the way she wrote about a psychic who watched a woman’s death through the murderer’s eyes, about a woman who hit 30 and had her dead parents come back with the intention of staying until she found the right man, about the daughter of a famous horror actor who lived in a house that had a few secrets and prompted questions of “could that be …?” About a woman who thought the life of a society belle was better than hers until she was killed and ended up in that woman’s body only to learn she was now a suspect in the belle’s fiancé’s death. Another woman who stumbled onto a small village that only appeared the month of December where Christmas was celebrated in a big way, a woman who almost gave up her life because she was slowly fading from life until she returned to her home town where no one knew her and a dark-natured homicide cop who has a long murdered woman haunting his house and he falls in love with her.

They were all practice works for what she really wanted to do. She wanted to leave that comfort zone and write a book that had all of those “you can’t do that” in it.

Thanks to a sassy witch named Jazz Tremaine, who’d been around for the last 700+ years, she was able to do just that. It wasn’t easy forgetting those old rules and just going for it, but she did it because the book deserved the absolute best she could give it. So this author worked hard, laughed, cried, sweated blood and discovered that writing about Jazz, Nick, Irma, and Fluff and Puff was the most fun she’d ever had. That author was me and the book was 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover.

Another form of living happily ever after since I’ve since sold three more books in my witch series. The second, Hex Appeal, will be out this November and Wicked By Any Other Name and Wishing You A Hexy Christmas in 2009.

It’s not easy writing outside your comfort zone. It’s like giving up that blankie that’s worn and soft and makes you feel better. But sometimes, jumping off that cliff and swimming through uncharted waters throws you into a whole new world that may be unfamiliar, but it can also be a lot of fun.

What about you? Do you like to venture into new territory or do you stay in your comfort zone?

Linda

Linda Wisdom, the author of the new paranormal romance, 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover, will be guest blogging here about her deliciously entertaining book this Monday, the 21st of April, so make sure you visit to see what she has to say.

50 Ways to Hex Your Lover features sassy witch Jazz Tremaine, her on-again, off-again sexy vampire lover, Nikolai Gregorivich, and of course, her always-hungry bunny slippers, Fluff and Puff, who are seriously adorable but dangerously quick to chomp on anything within the grasp of their sharp teeth.

The chemistry between Jazz and Nikolai sizzles throughout the book as they are forced to work together to stop a diabolical psycho who uses his powerful dark magick to steal vampires' and other magickal creatures' life forces.

Linda will blog more about the book on Monday, but I just want to say that it was one of the best and most entertaining paranormal romances I have ever read. All the characters are interesting and truly memorable, especially the annoying ghost Irma, Jazz's greedy employer Dweezil, and the truly foul Tyge Foulshadow. Nikolai is one vampire whose fangs I'd like to get on me, except that Jazz would kill me if I touched him, and I honestly wouldn't want her on my bad side.

Linda Wisdom's 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover is a real treat for witch and vampire lovers and it is full of fun and excitement on every single page. Read more about it this Monday when Linda guest blogs here.

I was a fan of Collective Soul ever since I heard their hit single "Shine" way back in 1994. Then came "December" and "The World I Know" in 1995, and after that, "Listen" in 1997, and I knew that their music were something really special. Unfortunately, I didn't follow them or their music after their 1997 album, Disciplined Breakdown, but I'm sure I must have missed a lot these last ten years!

Their latest album, Afterwords, sound slightly different from their older albums, a little more bright and cheerful, but the unique sound that I love about them is still there. Ed Roland's voice is still the same husky voice I fell in love with years ago, but I think it sounds even better now. What I really love about his voice in this album is that it still has the vulnerability that comes out so well in Collective Soul's older songs, but now it also has a sort of strong, sit-up-and-take-notice tone to it that I didn't notice before.

Admittedly, since I haven't been listening to them since the Disciplined Breakdown album, what's new to me may be old to other fans. As I've said previously, a change I've noticed is that Afterwords sounds a lot brighter and more cheerful compared to their older albums.

Most of their hit songs in the 90's were what I'd describe as angst-filled; while the music and lyrics were never negative, they were more gloomy with a passionately hopeless feel to them. Listening to Afterwords after being so used to their older songs, is almost like getting bowled over by a happy, energetic Golden Retriever puppy after coming home from a dead-end 9 to 5 job that you're resigned to, and nothing illustrates it more than their first single from this album, "Hollywood". It is one of the happiest, cheeriest, brightest, and catchiest songs I have ever heard, and I absolutely love it!

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that I didn't love their older songs, on the contrary, I absolutely loved them too, but this album is truly a fresh breath of air. I enjoyed all the songs on Afterwords but as usual, I have my favorites, particularly "What I Can Give You", "Bearing Witness", "All That I Know", and of course, the best one of all, "Hollywood".

Having said that, I do have hopes that Collective Soul might write some new songs in that old gloomy tone of theirs that I loved. It would be good to have both some happy and gloomy songs to listen to in their future albums. In the meantime though, I'll just enjoy being really cheerful while listening to Collective Soul's Afterwords.

More music from Collective Soul:

The Black Dahlia case has always fascinated, and at the same time, disgusted, me. It is one of the most gruesome murders in history, and the fact that it was never solved makes it all the more horrifying. It is also probably one of the main reason why people are still so fascinated with the case after so many years have gone by.

Lynda La Plante has taken her fascination to another level in her book The Red Dahlia. While it isn't directly about The Black Dahlia case itself, the book uses the case as a basis for a copy-cat murder by someone trying to emulate The Black Dahlia killer.

Keep in mind that The Red Dahlia isn't about The Black Dahlia case, but a work of fiction about a sick and disgusting killer who killed his victims and taunted the police in almost exactly the same fashion as The Black Dahlia killer did. Consequently, there is a lot of interesting and terrifying details about The Black Dahlia case, but after that is where the similarity ends.

Much of the first half of the book describes the murders and the similarities between the two cases, and how the murderer was trying to copy The Black Dahlia killer. Fortunately, unlike The Black Dahlia case, Detectives Anna Travis and James Langton manage to find the killer of The Red Dahlia. The second half of the book focuses on finding evidence and implicating the killer.

What I liked most about La Plante's The Red Dahlia is the factual, no-nonsense presentation of the story. La Plante writes in a very straightforward manner without adding unnecessary frills or details, even with the personal and romantic scenes, and it makes The Red Dahlia read like a very professional account of an actual case. The personal and romantic scenes only serve to make us care about the protagonists, and they add to rather than take away, from the reading experience.

All in all, The Red Dahlia is an extremely thrilling read, although gory, with a lot of both fascinating and gruesome details about The Black Dahlia case, and in its own right. Parts of the book may be slow going, but I highly recommend it to readers with strong stomachs. Stay away from this book if you're the type that can't handle gore, though.

More books from Lynda La Plante:

I must admit that I was almost totally ignorant about our sense of smell until I read Rachel Herz's Scent of Desire. Herz is recognized as the world's leading expert on the psychology of smell, and she now shares her knowledge with us in this book.

Scent of Desire is full of fascinating information about our sense of smell and its functions, and after reading it, I am amazed by how much I now know on the subject. Most of us never really think twice about this amazing sense of ours, taking it for granted and never noticing how valuable it is until we lose it. I'm guilty of not appreciating my own sense of smell as well.

There's a question that I like to ask the people I meet in an effort to get to know them better, "If you had to choose, would you rather be deaf or blind?" Their answers let me learn a little more about them, but isn't it a telltale sign that out of all our five senses, we usually only focus on our sight and hearing.

Perhaps we believe it's unlikely for us to lose our sense of taste and even more unlikely to lose our sense of touch, unless someone writes a book about these two senses and enlighten us otherwise. We also seldom hear about people losing their sense of smell, but even if we did, we don't understand the importance of the loss and we'd probably go, "He's lucky he didn't lose his sight or hearing instead!"

The few times I've contemplated my sense of smell are mostly when I travel and am forced to use a particularly foul-smelling toilet. At times like these, I usually wish I could lose my sense of smell. I'm glad I didn't get what I wished for, after reading Herz's Scent of Desire, I now realize that a loss like that would be devastating.

While it's true that losing my sense of smell would mean that I would be spared from smelling foul odors from a dirty toilet, it would also mean that I wouldn't even be able to detect my own body odor. In the case of Jessica Ross, one of Herz's clients who became anosmic(loss of smell) in a tragic accident, she started becoming paranoid that every time someone looks at her in a certain way, it's because she smells bad and doesn't know because she couldn't smell herself. She would shower at least twice a day, and wash her clothes every day, and still she'd worry that she may have an offensive body odor that she wouldn't be able to detect. She also worries that she wouldn't be able to smell smoke and fire, or spoiled food.

Jessica is also more irritable and depressed since losing her smell, and cries often. She feels that she has lost her quality of life, and that she's disconnected from herself and the people around her. She's also lost interest in sexual intimacy and isn't as attracted to her husband as before.

Herz explains later in the book, that we instinctively choose our mates by their smell, and having our sense of smell tampered with by external factors may cause us to choose the wrong mate. In various experiments where men and women had to choose their most preferred odor of the opposite sex, they almost always chose the odor of someone with the most different biological makeup from themselves. The exceptions are in cases where the women are on birth control pills, in which case, they choose the odor of the person with the most similar biological makeup to themselves.

Herz's theory is that for the human species to thrive, we were instinctively built, biologically, to be attracted to the mate most biologically different from ourselves, to avoid inbreeding and to ensure the survival of the species. Birth control pills mimics the conditions of pregnancy, causing us to instinctively look for safety and family, which in turn makes us attracted to mates who are more similar to us biologically, rather than mates who are biologically different from us. Herz further speculates that this may be why there is such a high divorce rate in our society. Women on birth control pills find themselves attracted to men they normally wouldn't be interested in, and after getting married and getting off the pill, they suddenly find that they are no longer attracted to their men.

It's definitely food for thought, our sense of smell controls our behaviors and actions more than we know, and it certainly explains why we have so many relationship problems. Jessica's inability to smell her husband's odor may be the reason why she finds herself losing her attraction to him.

Herz also talks about the why some odors are considered pleasant to us and unpleasant to others, and vice versa. She says that there are no universally 'good' or 'bad' odor, liking or disliking an odor is due to societal conditioning. I believe her. Living in a country where the durian is called "The King of the Fruits" and savored by locals, it astounds me that foreigners, usually Westerners, can't stand the smell of this wonderfully delicious fruit. Apparently, it works the other way around too; Westerners love cheese, which Asians supposedly can't stand. Personally, I love cheese, but I know a few friends who hate it. I suppose there may be some Westerners who love durians as well.

One anecdote of Herz's that stuck in my mind was about how she became fascinated with our enigmatic sense of smell. When she was a little girl, she loved the smell of skunk, and it was only when she expressed her love of the scent to her friends that she discovered that the smell skunk was supposed to be "bad" when they made fun of her.

It reminded me of something similar that happened to me not too long ago in college, when a friend of mine just came back from a break, and I said to him, "You smell nice." He and a couple of other friends gave me weird looks, and it wasn't until later, when I realized that he smelled of cigarette smoke, that I understood why they behaved so strangely at my compliment. In fact, I thought I was weird!

While the information Herz shares in The Scent of Desire assures me that I'm not abnormal for liking the smell of cigarette smoke, I have no idea why the smell of it on my friend smelled good to me, I don't remember any particularly good memories associated with the smell of smoke as I am a non-smoker, and no one in my family smokes. As for what happened with my friend after that, he probably thought that I was interested in him and that was just a terrible pickup line, because he went out of his way to be nice to me after that.

Herz also covers other odor-related topics like aromatherapy and how lavender, peppermint, and other oils don't really have any beneficial effects on us except through conditioning, how particular smells can trigger long-forgotten memories, the link between our senses of smell and taste and how our sense of taste can diminish without our sense of smell, and what the future holds in odor technology.

The information contain within the pages of The Scent of Desire is astounding and sometimes mind-boggling, but Herz conveys these information so well with her wonderfully charming voice and writing style. She is a pioneer in this field and she has my utmost respect for creating the awareness we need about our amazing sense of smell.

I recently reviewed Linda Berdoll's Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, which was her sequel to Jane Austen's classic, Pride and Prejudice. In the review, I mentioned that Berdoll's sequel was a maturation of Austen's original story, and that Berdoll gives us so much more of everything; drama, complexity, and even sex.

Berdoll's sequel to her sequel, Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley, is a continuation from where we left off in Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, and again, it gives us more of what we loved in the first sequel.

In Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, we read about Elizabeth and Darcy's relationship as a married couple, Darcy's devotion to Elizabeth, Elizabeth's love for Darcy, and even the wild sex they have. And to spice it all up, there's all the trials and tribulations their notorious relations put them through in between, most notably the annoying ninny, Lydia and the despised blackguard, Wickham.

In the first sequel, we end the book with the knowledge that Wickham is in fact Darcy's half brother from one of their father's transgressions with the hired help. John Christie, whose mother had sexual relations with both Wickham and Darcy, turns out to be Wickham's illegitimate son, whom he later murders in cold blood during his desertion from the battlefield.

Wickham is believed to be dead by all, including his wife, Lydia, but we find out that he's well and alive before the book ends. At the same time, we also see that Georgiana, Darcy's sister, is in love with Fitzwilliam and has gone in pursuit of him to war, and Elizabeth faces her pregnancy alone and later gives birth to twins, while Darcy in turn, has gone in pursuit of Georgiana.

In Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley, the sequel to Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, we see how Elizabeth and Darcy adjust to life with their newborn twins, Georgiana and Fitzwilliam gets married, and Wickham returns from the dead. But what really makes this sequel exciting, is that Lydia, believing the reports of Wickham's death in battle, has already remarried, and John Christie's half sister, Sally Frances, is determined to find her brother's murderer and mete out her own brand of justice.

There is remarkable connectivity between the characters and how each one relates to another. What I like most about Berdoll's sequels are that every character, even the lowliest ones, play very important roles in the plot. Sometimes there might be a passing mention of a particular character we deem unimportant, and later we see the same character again, playing a larger role.

I am amazed by Berdoll's ability to flesh out complex and interesting characters and plot lines. There isn't a single boring passage in the book, even when the characters are only talking about mundane matters. Berdoll has an amazing grasp on understanding human nature and how to make the characters seem larger than life with their thoughts and motivations.

I really enjoyed the journey with Elizabeth and Darcy and all the Pride and Prejudice characters, and also with the new and very interesting characters, that Berdoll has taken me on. While I thought that Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley ended perfectly, with every character getting just what they deserved(especially Wickham), I can't help but be a little sad that it ever had to end. If Berdoll ever decides to write a sequel to Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley, you can be sure I'll be one of the first to acquire it.